Need your opinion

[Dakota]

Originally Posted by bigsig

Doing a JV game by myself, no outs. R1 on 2B, R2 on 1B. B3 hits a line drive to right field. R1 holds up on 2B to see if ball is caught, however R2 runs toward 2B. Ball is short hopped (not caught on fly) and RF throws to F4.

R1 stays on 2B!
B3 (BR) now on 1B
R2 is hung up between 1B & 2B
F4 (instead of tagging R1 and stepping on 2B for a double play, tries to tag R2 who now tries to return to 1B (which is occupied by BR).

I’m not sure I made the right call but when R2 turned and started to run back to 1B, I called interference, dead ball, R2 is out, leaving R1 on 2B and BR on 1B. My thinking was that if a BR is out for interference if they reverse course while running to 1B from home that it must also be interference if they are forced to a base and attempt to return to a base which is legally occupied.

The coach argued that R2 had to be tagged to be out and the ball should have remained live.

Not a close game so just looking to get it right.

See my nomenclature corrections...

Anyway, coach was correct. That out for reversing toward home only applies to a BR and only if to avoid a tag. Any other runner can reverse how ever they want - you see it all the time in a run down situation.

At the time you killed the play, you still had no outs and a live ball. The defense still had to record some outs before the offense got everyone safely somewhere. It is possible that during the attempt to retire R2 that R1 would have tried for 3B, or any number of other possibilities.